The Relentless Winds and Waves
by CodexAlucinatio
Summary: The sun rises, the wind stirs, the waves churn, and you're not there. The survivors of a war find that the consequences of peace has their own cruelties.
1. Chapter 1

Worldline Variant 6b – Iteration 10664 – Seed Value bcNa36cV45q

Critical Phase: Third Stage – "Ripening"

Focal Actors – Combined Fleet commanders: "Suzaku," "Genbu," "Seiryu," "Byakko," "Koryu" (deceased)

Failure State – Geopolitical Degeneration: Terminal War

* * *

"Official cessation of hostilities" is what they put down on the paperwork. "End of the Third Siren War" headlined the major presses. A neat line, dividing the then and now – a barrier between the horrors of the past and the hopeful light of present day.

A fiction, of course. Nothing is ever so neat. Bloodshed is never so kind as to leave no stains, and this was true even in a war where all of humankind was miraculously allied to common purpose, fighting back against a seabound threat that foretold ruin for all. It was even less so when that miracle was betrayed, decades later.

There should have been parades, award ceremonies, honor and glory for those who survived. There was, instead, a funeral.

The weather was notably empathetic that day – a grayed-out overcast, pungent with the smell of rain just barely held back. The archipelago that hosted Azur Lane's Pacific headquarters was normally a tropical paradise – if one given an unusual tendency to snow gently or turn an autumnal fire of gold and red, following the moods and whims of its multifarious residents. This was a storied isle – even now, especially now, the greatest concentration of ship-spirits among the international task force's bases around the world, and the consequences of being home to such transcendental creatures was felt upon every pebble and every wave that lapped against its shores.

And that darkened mood that yellowed the grass and withered fruits upon their vine was shared by the purely human contingent as well. They outnumbered the ships, even, five-to-one – ambassadors from every allied nation, and every liberated nation besides. Rows of uniformed men and women, saluting the coffin as it passed by their ranks.

That slab of stained wood was hoisted upon the shoulders of women seemingly too frail to bear its weight, yet it was not the physical burden etched upon their faces, dwarfed as it was by the weight of the armaments they bore – a shipgirl's formalwear, as much as the uniform and banners of her homeland.

Of the Eagle Union, Enterprise and Essex carried the right corners, their expressions as stormy as the clouds above. From the Royal Navy, King George V held the remaining back corner, her once-irrepressible gallantry dimmed.

Only their Northern Union peer was defiant against the oppressive atmosphere of the isle – October, who was once Gangut[1].

They lowered the casket into the ground, upon the hillside that overlooked the still-smoking ruins of what was once their home, still marred by that final spasm of violence. If it was rain or tears that finally started trickling down Enterprise's cheeks as the sky broke over them… none but her could know.

Even the most storied hero is but a representative for the legions that worked beneath their great shadow, laboring to make sure that their symbol of hope can be at the right time, at the right place, with the right sword.

And if that sword should break, to put their very bodies on the line in their service.

Once, this auditorium played host to thousands of uniformed officers, each called upon from their home fleets around the world to serve at the front of humanity's defense – or, in this age of shipgirls and weaponized spirits[2], to at least be the guiding support and tactical underpinnings of those that do.

Over half of that graduating class was slain or crippled over the course of the war. And for that many to remain in active service meant that they were called "lucky," if such a term can apply to the aftermath of such horrendous attrition. Lucky to have produced the hero of their age. Lucky for so many to remain, compared to their peers. Lucky to have so successfully routed such a terrifying opponent.

"Lucky" isn't what they call themselves, as they commiserate and congregate in quiet, hidden corners, licking their wounds among the few left in the world that can understand what they survived, and all that they've lost.

These three, sitting silently as their superiors filed in, have lost the least. Uniforms from the Northern Parliament, Eagle Union, and Royal Navy.

"Congratulations are in order," rumbled Azur Lane's secretary-general – a man whose deep voice belied an almost emaciated and skeletal appearance, especially between his close-shaven scalp and pristine white uniform. "In recognition of your success in lifting the siege upon Volgograd, Captain Anya Zaytsev is hereby promoted to Rear Admiral[3] and charged with overseeing the Arctic Theater's security operations."

She stood to attention – all seven towering feet of her, making the Russian officer the most imposing presence in the room. The long black officer's jacket, fastened by a double-row of gold buttons and lined thick with fur, did little to mitigate the brooding sharpness of her appearance. Parts of her brunette hair was streaked white – not with age, but injury, marking the passage of flowering tree-like electrocution scars that sectioned the left side of her face, turning one eye white.

"Rear Admiral Michael Ardis, your leadership along the English Channel and down the coast of Portugal saved countless lives. You will oversee the North Atlantic and Mediterranean theater as Vice Admiral."

An older man – but "wizened" would be an inappropriate descriptor. His dark blue glengarry bonnet rested on a visage outlined by a thick salt-and-pepper beard. The sharp click of his heels and gentlemanly bow, doffing his cap, had an undauntable energy to it – if marked notably by the gleam of the prosthetic clasps that firmly gripped the indigo fabric. He exuded strength unflagging – a stonelike stoutness that's weathered every crashing wave the Atlantic's thrown against European shores.

"And lastly, Captain Jacob White – we see it fit to promote you to Rear Admiral, and tasked with the reclamation of the Sakura archipelago and adjacent Pacific territories."

There were significant glances exchanged between officers and attending staff as the blue-eyed American stood forth. He was the most youthful of the promoted officers, his 40s barely on the distant horizon, though his deeds were not in doubt – but for one other, he would have been the most decorated officer of his generation, leading one decisive battle after another across the western pan-American coastline, and in that final climatic operation in Tokyo Bay. Indeed, he was the very visage of a sandy-blonde pulp fiction hero of yesteryear.

And he was visibly perturbed by his assignment.

"You have questions," said the secretary-general. A statement, not an inquiry. The man pinched the bridge of his nose in an unusual display of frustration. "And the answer is 'he refused promotion.'"

"...ah. The bastard still feels guilt about missing the shot," said Zaytsev wryly, breaking with decorum.

"Lad didn't miss," rumbled Ardis.

"No, he was intercepted," followed White distractedly. "Sir, if I may..."

"I'm afraid he asked to be assigned to Intelligence."

"...damn it. The Luparii?"

She was being hunted.

It was an unfamiliar sensation for Prinz Eugen. Not that she was unused to being targeted, no – that was part and parcel of the Ironblood Fleet's frontline efforts. But there was a vast difference between the deadly game of high-caliber cannon tag she played with her adversaries, even in the depths of a moonless night, and the prickling sensation she currently felt, stalked by an unseen menace as she made her way overland.

"Hah?! 'Battleships obsolete in post-Siren era?'" The rail car's interior rustled as a newspaper was irritably flipped through. Hipper glowered as she quickly scanned the interview. "Without the threat of close-range Mirror Sea incursions, conventional warfare will be dominated by equally conventional force projection technologies across hundreds of kilometers. The long-range capabilities of jet-delivered payloads outstrips the strategic potential of the most powerful… this no-name egghead wants to decommission everything that isn't a carrier, destroyer-escort, or submarine!"

"Huh..." said Eugen distractedly. "Like a permanent vacation..."

The alpine valleys of the Swiss wilds was sunlit that day – a tapestry of green, earth tones, and silvery snow far removed from the dark churning waters she was used to. The van too – a manually operated service vehicle for the Red Cross, clumsy in comparison to her summoned riggings… riggings that took serious effort to manifest, so far inland as they were now. They were posing as relief workers with the organization, en route to the headquarters in Bern.

With good timing, they'd hopefully lose themselves in the chaos of the February carnival, shaking loose any tails, discard these nurse uniforms, and then… well. And then they'd see.

"Prinz, this isn't a joking matter! He's literally calling us useless!"

"Mm..." Prinz Eugen's eyes narrowed as a black sedan passed by the other way. "We kind of are, at the moment. No commander, no fleet..."

"I… yeah," said Hipper, deflated and morose. "Yeah, you're right."

The Ironblood's complicity as Crimson Axis members earned them few favors at the end of the war. Even if there was dissent within their ranks, as was the case with Mikasa's Reformation Fleet out in the East, the pall of suspicion loomed heavily over the red-and-blacks. That there was no equally blatant divergence as was with the New Sakura Empire, now a government-in-exile hosted by the island-state of Taiwan4, made matters worse.

Roon and Friedrich were imprisoned – and the weight of that word was insufficient to describe the harrowing affair that proved to be, with the port of Hamburg still in ruins. Would it have been enough to claim that she and Hipper were double-agents in their internal power struggles? That though they could not bring themselves to break the unity of the Ironblood Fleet, they'd at least worked to strengthen the moderate factions within it.

But with Bismarck and Tirpitz both missing, who can attest on their behalf? And that was a heartache unto itself, for the reborn sisters to be so abruptly torn apart again just as they were finally reconciled under Azur Lane's foremost commander…

Prinz Eugen reached out to pat her elder sister on the head as she steered around the bend. "Don't worry, sis. We still have allies. We just need to follow the Aare toward the North Sea and-"

"PRINZ!" shouted Hipper in a sudden panic.

Chaos erupted in a fury of rent steel and bellowing fire.

"Callsign Remus. … Kodiak. … Panther. Yes, objectives were secured without incident. Requesting confirmation of exfiltration parameters. … Huh. Very well."

"We've attached an array of biometric sensors on you. It's pointless to pretend to still be sleeping." Silence. "I'm rather lacking in sticks, I fear. Would a carrot entice? I have an extremely pleasant brandy on hand. I am given to understand you are something of an… eager connoisseur, shall we say?"

It ached to open her eyes. Really, her whole body ached. "First you try to kill me, and now you're offering me drink? That seems a bit stereotypically villainous, doesn't it?"

"Oh, hardly. You're… what was that interesting Japanese term they were arguing about making official? _Kansen_. Much more dignified-sounding than 'shipgirl.' A car crash wouldn't even scratch you. Even our EMP devices could only knock you out for a day. Prinz Eugen, welcome back to Hamburg."

She stared at the man addressing her, then glanced down at her own situation. "My sister."

"Is alive. And _actually _sleeping."

"Hah." Uncuffed. Unrestrained – sticky plastic sensors hardly count, and the plush cushioned chair she was upon was otherwise ordinary. She was dressed in a soft silken gown. The cry of Atlantic gulls outside could be faintly heard above the bustle of construction and traffic down below, behind light warmed by the thin creamy veils over the windows. This was an extremely expensive hotel.

Her expression sharpened. "What is the meaning of this, Commander Dlamini?"

Her captor had his back turned as he poured brandy into snifters, the crystalline sound of the pour taunting her ears. He turned, and her face stiffened – she knew the man once, but not quite so… mummified. Where there wasn't thick gauze tightly bound, there was puckered scar tissue, mottled where there was once smooth umber. A grin that was tight and painful where she remembered, vaguely, a laxness from the former submarine commander. They'd sat across from each other at one of the many clandestine reconciliation negotiations in the initial days of Akagi's endgame.

Humans – real humans – didn't heal as well or as quickly, she remembered. And Dlamini was supposed to have died when the Mirror Sea was forcefully collapsed from within, splitting the waters all the way down to the sea floor in the agony of its deathrattle5.

"It's Commodore these days, I'm afraid." There was a gleam across dark, nearly pitch-black pupils. "They told me the promotion was necessary for what I sought to do. I suspect they just ran out of bodies to fill the paperwork." She carefully, reluctantly, accepted the brandy from bandaged hands.

"The two of you are officially deceased. We've prepared new identities for you, and can arrange travel to Brazil. You can live out your lives in anonymity – and given what we understand of how Wisdom Cubes operate, they will be very long ones, yes?" He tilted his glass back greedily. "Ah... Perhaps that appeals to you? The end of glory, perhaps – but peace. Peace is to be jealously prized."

A knowing look met a glaring unspoken rebuttal.

"I am Ironblood," said Prinz Eugen tersely and simply, and the depth of her words were understood.

"Then, instead, I have a job offer for you."

* * *

1 The Russian front was a horrifying bloodbath – made all the more so by the tentative nature of their Azur Lane support, thanks to the politics surrounding their negotiations with the Ironblood faction. Their place at the Second Tripartite Agreement's table was, as October fiercely reminded them, bought by the loss and wholly Russian reclamation of Vladivostok, Volgograd, and Murmansk.

2 Most elements of Siren technology remain, to this day, indecipherable black boxes, and the use of fantastical or mythological loan-words to describe their functions are heavily entrenched even among the struggling hardliners of scientific methodology and documentation. They find themselves in uneasy rhetorical alliance with, of all organizations, the Catholic Church – among others whose doctrines are antithetical to the modern rise of spiritual animism.

3 Massive jumps in promotion were not, alas, uncommon near the end of the war. Especially as the Sirens made it obvious that Mirror incursions could and would be made far behind enemy lines for maximally demoralizing effect, menacing officers with particularly intimate bonds with their charges. These were also, on the whole, the same officers and squadrons most provably effective against them.

4 The island, along with swathes of the mainland, was forcefully occupied by the Sakura Empire early on – a repeat of its fate in the second war. That Akagi saw fit to heavily invest in Taiwan's infrastructure as a staging grounds for further campaigns… that, too, was familiar. The distrust that bred between their mainland Eastern Radiance kin and the islanders made for cautious negotiations, and Mikasa's faction deliberately positioned themselves far south in Kaohsiung just to stress their lack of influence over Taipei politics.

5 International efforts have since redoubled toward preparations for an indefinite ice age. The Sakura Empire's civilian capital was relocated all the way down to Nagasaki to compensate for the environmental devastation. Already, global average temperatures were down two degrees...


	2. Chapter 2

Experiment Log – Seed Value bcNa36cV45q

Test Variables – Psy-Stressors 75.224.36, 18.003.44, 01.001.01 among others; Developmental Progression Influence 10% (High); [Keyless]

Observation notes: Apocryphal worldlines are inherently valueless towards our primary objective, as our prediction models are certain to a five-sigma degree that the removal of the [Key] among environmental variables prevents ideal development and optimal [Awakenings].

They are, however, useful as a means of refining experimental methodology. Recent developments in Worldline 1A (Seed Value vI51T0r5d1r – Test Site Gamma) demonstrated that our solvency of m-models is less complete than initially assumed. Though their linear-causal motive framework – necessary for cohesive development – inherently limits range of possible responses, there remains a degree of uncertainty that allows for errors to accumulate in the final outcome. In effect, making them unpredictable once a certain threshold is achieved.

That unpredictability is "hope."

Destructive testing in apocryphal worldlines is therefore necessary to further probe the limits of that uncertainty…

* * *

The port of Makung, once called Mako, was familiar grounds to Mikasa – it'd until recently been under Sakura control, along with the neighboring main island of Taiwan, and served as their operational foundation to claim the South China Seas. Even decades ago it acted as a staging and refueling point for the empire's regional control during their hostilities against the old Northern Empire. Some of her earliest companions, the destroyers and cruisers of the era, once called it home – she could still hear them as faint ghosts of memory over the harbor waves, standing here on the balcony of the officer's housing in the residential district with eyes closed in contemplation.

That tinny crackle of the first radios they'd been equipped with, so new at the time. The excited voices of girls from past the distant horizon. Sister-ships on disparate patrols talking, complaining, gossiping, laughing…

The air still hummed with voices, she knew, but the new Dragon Republic encryption made it all white static to her, and the tongue they spoke between themselves was lost to her as well – as distant now as the stars above her tonight. So cold, even as the tropical breeze rustled the palm leaves and the white cloak of her dress.

"Defeat is a common fate of a soldier," she once said to comfort the stricken Knyaz Suvurov, as the echoes of Tsushima ran through the world. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in it." But perhaps there was such thing as a shameful victory.

"Have I performed my duty adequately?" she asked as the door clicked open behind her, scenting the breeze with faint traces of tobacco, wine, and diplomatic revelry. The footsteps behind her paused momentarily, and the door shut.

"For now, yes. But the world makes work for soldiers, no? Even if we'd rather they just let us enjoy the beach for a bit."

Mikasa laughed knowingly, and was surprised to find that she could do so in her circumstances. "Essex, it's good to see you."

The Eagle Union's carrier curtsied in her dinner party dress, a vibrant wave of navy blue and magenta frills splashing over one shoulder. "Happy New Year, Mikasa."

"Mm, Happy New Year. This is the first we've spoken in some time, outside of official business. How are you?"

The younger woman shrugged. "Too busy by half. We're still dealing with insurgents throughout Southeast Asia along with decontamination efforts from our staging grounds in Okinawa – nothing that has required my direct intervention, but the secretarial duties alone are pressing."

"Nothing you can't handle, of course."

A flashing grin, confident and self-assured. "No, of course not."

Essex had fought by Mikasa's side outside Tokyo Bay, securing the perimeter against reinforcements as the main fleet moved in on the capital city. It was, in fact, why they numbered among the survivors – the perimeter fleet, as desperately engaged as they were with the swarming ranks of mass-production vessels and "empty shell" _kansen_, was far outside the blast zone when the Mirror Sea explosively ruptured.

Up until that sudden end, her blade had cleaved the hollow forms of dozens of former companions, her cannons had broken their endless ranks – and for all of their disquieting mechanical efficiency and swiftness, and even raw power, none could scale her wall of combat experience.

Yet compared to Essex's accomplishments, she might as well have been struggling like a novice in her first battle. Mikasa remembered the scream of Helldivers drowning out the cannons and blotted out the sky, that red glow of the carrier-girl's eyes as her fury was concentrated like a cutting-torch's deadly flame, and the fatal patterns of her all-encompassing dance – the foaming columns of seawater blasted to the heavens in almost musical sequence as enemy battleships and carriers alike sank, sank, sank…

And she realized then, intuiting at a glance from the younger girl's expression that day, there were heights that experience alone would never take her.

The commanding flagship of Azur Lane's Western Pacific reclamation efforts, the highest-ranking _kansen_ of the region, offered her a glass of sparkling wine, and Mikasa accepted.

"Your commander… he is a gracious man," said Mikasa carefully.

Essex nodded as their glasses clinked. "He's… practical. Even if the treaty requires the Sakura Emp- Sakura _Parliament's_ disarmament, we have use for as many cruisers and destroyers as willing to work with us."

"And as living reparation," said Mikasa pointedly. Essex winced. By the terms of international convention, prisoners of war were not to be used for labor purposes – but the same conventions differentiated them from "surrendered personnel," a terminology espoused by the remnants of the orthodox Sakura government's leadership as a face-saving measure against the shame of imprisonment, and specified only human combatants[1].

That left the Sakura fleet's survivors in a legal limbo, even after the Reformation Fleet was later given international recognition as the new lawful government. The victims of the orthodox government's expansionism were eager to capitalize on that uncertainty – and specifically to bolster their own military capability at cost to the defeated.

The tension between them broke as laughter burst out beneath the balcony. Young girls passing by on the streets below – Ning Hai and Ping Hai, leading their newest junior around and teasing her halting accent.

Tan Yang, once Yukikaze, glanced up at the balcony and waved as they parted, beaming in her new Republican uniform.

"I appreciate, of course, his intervention against the hardliners," continued Mikasa. "Though I admit the diaspora does not sit well with me, I can say with certainty that my former companions vastly prefer the opportunity to regain their honor over…" She made an unpleasant expression. "...the scrapyards."

Essex nodded, her own visage serious. "And my commander intends to uphold those wishes within the West Pacific Fleet."

"And those outside of it?" asked Mikasa, looking away.

"That, Prime Minister[2], is why he wishes to schedule a meeting with you at your earliest convenience..."

Media day in Portsmouth – a source of headaches for Vice Admiral Ardis. The port's security wasn't his responsibility, he knew, but the Stone of Scotland[3]'s great beard bristled in agitation nonetheless as he witnessed home for the first time in some months.

"Austerity measures… that buffoon of a PM[4]," he growled, low and only within Belfast's earshot.

"We feel much the same," she murmured, demure expression unchanging as her shipform slowly drifted into harbor to the flashes of cameras. Most weren't directed at her – the star of today's show was the united French fleet making their diplomatic rounds. Dunkerque was in a rare state of joy, escorted by Emile Bertin and the United Iris Navy destroyers as she brought the French diplomatic corps to shore. Her ceremonial dress matched the silver of her hair – both were embellished by streamers of red and blue, as befitting her nation's colors, waving gaily in the seawind.

"Her Majesty wishes to make known that 'cleaning services' cannot be utilized as such on a regular basis," said Belfast as she curtsied to the crowd. Ardis waved too, the glint of steel fingertips showing off a more lifelike prosthetic than he usually wore in the line of duty. "While we do specialize in counter-intelligence, our operational forces make it difficult to provide the level of security you are requesting."

"Aye, and Azur Lane's purse-strings5 are legally drawn tight during times of supposed peace as well."

"Perhaps a point to bring up at the next UN council."

A quiet, cynical laugh. "Only if we fuck up too badly with what we do have. You've seen the reports." She nodded. It wasn't a question. "The _Luparii_ too. Movements in the Baltic. 'A shining mirage' in Kaliningrad. No offense meant, Belfast, but I fucking hate this spy shit."

"I cannot possibly comment," she said primly.

"As soon as ceremonials are over, I want you to contact Sheffield again. I know you weren't expecting her to check in yet, but I'm concerned about her previous-"

Did she spot something in the harbor's congregation? A quirk of her sensors, far beyond mere human capabilities? Even so, the window of survival was scalpel-thin, and only by her pure reflex was he still unscathed, shoved aside by Belfast. A bolt of raw lightning seared across her deck, across where he once stood, and it was only due to the iron will of the head maid that she didn't collapse from feedback agony.

But others were more than making up for her lack of screaming. The civilian journalists were in a panic as their colleagues seemingly suffered spontaneous combustion – their cameras malfunctioning in deadly fashion, raining shrapnel in all directions. Base security was caught by surprise, untrained for an attack from an unexpected vector – that vector being seemingly everything around them as deadly energy coursed randomly through the port. Ball lightning manifested rapidly, like a satanic mockery of a bubble bath, and where they burst there was sulfur and pain for all nearby.

They seemed, in particular, to want to manifest near _kansen._

Dunkerque was burning. Dunkerque was _screaming._

"We were too late by half a step."

"Dammit. Salvageable?"

"Barely. Hard drop in ten."

"Affirmative."

None were looking to the sky amid the port's chaos. And even if they did, they would've noticed but faint glints before the roar of impact drowned out everything else, spraying foaming water in all directions around Dunkerque and her escorts – killing the sudden lightning storm in an instant as steam and fog roiled over and deadened the early morning light.

The screaming faded with unsettling speed, punctuated with the crackle of small-caliber anti-personnel fire – and much odder harmonics, like an attack of tinnitus coupled with the textured silence of heavy snowfall.

Dunkerque's cries lessened to a rattling moan.

Then silence.

She was cognizant through it all, but paralyzed by an unknowable, irresistible force. The dark silhouette now before her bleary, static-filled vision was, however, hauntingly familiar.

A gloved hand raised a finger to where lips might be if a matte-black ovoid mask wasn't obscuring the identity of the agent that stood over her. The ringing worsened, her consciousness faded.

Belfast woke to familiar bellowing. The roar of orders from her… her current commander. She stirred uneasily, and sitting up she found herself surrounded by her stricken peers, tended to by the fleet's medi-mechanical _kansen_ specialists.

Ardis noticed her almost immediately, and marched quickly to her side. "Some sort of EMP attack," he growled. "I've alerted Elizabeth. The _Luparii_ intervened, the _only_ reason we have so few casualties – but they took Dunkerque to Lord knows where-"

Wordlessly, she grasped his hand. He paused, brows furrowed as he glanced down, then nodded.

"Go when you've recovered."

An orderly yelled at Ardis as he rummaged his pockets for a cigarette and lit it up – civilian medics being the only ones that'd dare such a privilege to the rear admiral. He obliged them, trailing ashes and smoke as he exited.

The evidence destroyed. She recollected the words.

_Where fiction fades._

* * *

1 The legal status of _kansen_ differed from nation to nation. Among Azur Lane's security membership, their obviously human natures and their critical role in the war efforts won them great esteem – public opinion alone ensured equal protection under the law. Elsewhere, especially among seafaring nations crippled by the Crimson Axis's actions, their reception was much chillier, and perceptions emphasized more strongly their inherent natures and backgrounds as weapons of war. As a result, treaties involving them are still under heavy contention.

2 Battleship Mikasa was decommissioned, her riggings partially dismantled, as necessitated by the peace treaty. By international agreement, for both her role in mitigating Akagi's advance and her historical importance in the Battle of Tsushima, she was allowed to continue her work as a civilian leader, operating out of Kaohsiung while infrastructure was steadily rebuilt in her homeland. Her re-election, the first such election of the new Sakura Parliament, did not go smoothly – but international pressures blunted the threat of those that demanded that Sakura military sovereignty be left untouched.

3 Michael Ardis's service record included active duty all the way back to the second official Siren incursion of the modern age. Though he fared no better against them than any other human commander of the time, the pugnacious resilience of his youth helped buy time for civilian evacuations. He'd only gotten stonier with age.

4 Wartime success does not equate to domestic tranquility. The sheer cost of the Royal force's expenditures led to worsening economic conditions – the unpopular rationing measures chained into a constitutional crisis that diminished the monarchy's standings and empowered political factions that sought to mitigate their economic losses through privatization sales of formerly nationalized industries and functions.

5 International task forces with the military strength to match superpowers stop being convenient when your current enemy's dead, and you're uncertain about your erstwhile allies who also have commanders within its ranks...


	3. Chapter 3

Experiment Log – Seed Value bcNa36cV45q

**Wisdom Cubes** (colloquial) – Memetic manifestation and representational translation engines, designed for compatibility with early post-industrial infrastructure and biotechnologies. Excepting access to biomatter, initiation energy, and non-organic feedstock for auxiliary systems, m-engines are largely self-contained. In "seed" form, they are a cubical carbon-lattice structure, housing an internal r̵̥̅e̸̙͑d̶̫̅a̶̮͘c̶͕͑ţ̸͋é̸̥d̵̬͒ dual-purposed for both energy and data r̵̥̅e̸̙͑d̶̫̅a̶̮͘c̶͕͑ţ̸͋é̸̥d̵̬͒. They are resistant to probing, as the atto-scale r̵̥̅e̸̙͑d̶̫̅a̶̮͘c̶͕͑ţ̸͋é̸̥d̵̬͒ is subject to observer's-paradox effects, which cannot be reconciled by the technological limitations of the test era, barring r̵̥̅e̸̙͑d̶̫̅a̶̮͘c̶͕͑ţ̸͋é̸̥d̵̬͒.

While most key systems are tied to the initial worldline's seed-value, m-cube data synthesis functions are instead heavily affected by r̵̥̅e̸̙͑d̶̫̅a̶̮͘c̶͕͑ţ̸͋é̸̥d̵̬͒. Under normal conduct, this does not produce errant behavior, but sufficient exposure to stressors trigger the desired cascading pattern (see ref. [Awakening Protocol]).

Distribution of m-engines is to be conducted in parallel with parameter-establishing infiltration protocol (see related documents)…

* * *

Blood was the foundation of Science City Dubna. Blood was the cost of progress. Blood was the price for victory.

Before there was a city, there was the dam, and beneath the waves of the dam was the bones of a fortress long shattered by feuding kin, and the ghosts of towns buried beneath the mud. Here, an army of prisoners was trucked in, and told to choose between the shovel or the bullet, and so the shovels they chose, and the cement, and the sawblades, and the hammers. And sometimes they wondered if they should've chosen otherwise, out here in the cold, under the watchful gaze of those they might have once called brethren or comrade, bleeding upon the soil all the same.

It was her blood that stained the foundations of these halls, so long ago now. Zaytsev was a tall and gangly creature, even in her youth – tougher than the men around her, or at least meaner, the consequences of an unlucky childhood amid the streets of Moscow, and an unluckier choice in politics when the old Empire burned to ashes. They punished her upon these rocks, whipped her for her insubordination, beat her for her theft.

She remembers still the cruel, icy, leering blue of her tormentor's eyes – the Navy man assigned as liaison to Kurchatov, the elegant man who belayed her execution. The jesting man that plied her with honey and wine while he tightened the ropes and gouged with the lash, bragging of the terrible secrets they uncovered to a helpless toy.

She remembers the little man, the meager man, the sadist that loved to break down the tall, weaken the strong, humiliate the proud…

And most of all, Anya remembers the pleasant crunching of her rapist's windpipe beneath her own calloused hands, when the rebellion's efforts reached Dubna, sweeping down from the northwestern coast – when the pressures and cruelties of the third War grew too much to bear.

She kept the secrets and the city, holding it for three days and four desperate nights alongside comrades that grew still and cold, one by one, as the bullets sang. And when _Oktyabrskaya_, eyes red with rage and hands crimson-stained with the demands of righteousness, met them at last, Anya offered the city… and _used_ those secrets.

It led to further torments, further violence, all along the Arctic coast. But at least they were nightmares she chose – and nightmares she inflicted, rather than received.

Zaytsev kept the lash, hidden in her private residence. It reminded her.

"Rear Admiral," acknowledged the gatekeeper, saluting as her convoy steered into the Dubna particle accelerator lab's entrance. "We are honored by your presence."

Honor, they say, yet it was not with awe that they looked upon her with, but fear as they averted their gaze. The Navy Witch – she liked that name more than the first iterations of it, when October offered her a small squad of green and skittish destroyer-girls to aid relief efforts in the far eastern coast. Soul-stealer and enchantress – also impressive monikers. Northern Dragon, for her accomplishments that day near the end, the fangs and the fire of her salt-hardened battleships wrenching loose the Crimson Axis's hold over the besieged city, the surging storm and thunder that left its permanent mark on her...

"Little Anya," not so much, but that was how High Command greeted her at the reception hall, a smirk on October's wind-cracked lips and in her stormy gray eyes, uniformed in tasseled splendor. The only person in all of the North whose own towering personage and charisma could allow such a joke at Zaytsev's expense, and one of the few faces that brightened at her presence. "Pah. you're not wearing the dress I sent you."

"Right, because I'd _want_ to look like some western floozy," drawled Anya sarcastically. This was far from the first time they'd butt heads over appearances – her supreme commander[1] was a philosophical heretic and colored by the old school, given to the somewhat controversial belief that good praxis still left room for embellishments – especially that if rhetorics were a weapon for the revolution, then it was a grave error to _not_ take advantage of your enemies' own self-inflicted biases and cultural conditionings against them.

It was hard to tell how much of this was earnest belief and how much it was an excuse to keep the imperial fineries of her youth. But it was true that October had a better time with international media than her immediate predecessors – she took full advantage of her heroic bearing at every photo op, and the visual impact of a warrior-goddess reclaiming the motherland as a tasseled cloak billowed in the high winds of the northern sea was one no western press was willing to give up... making it easy for them to overlook just who she was pointing that warrior's sword at.

And that was just one way that Anya envied her superior, who laughed gaily, yelled loudly, drank outrageously, and fought freely. The rallying sun to her sinister shadow – and by October's radiance, made her shade stronger too.

Which was why they were here together, on an elevator down to such depths that the piercing gaze of the heavens found no purchase – a rarity, given their mutual duties. But it took the highest authority to unlock these vaults, and one versed in the lowest blasphemies to decipher its mysteries.

Before them, a cubic crystal pulsed and grew, faded and diminished, suspended by unseen force between two vast iron plates.

"Ah, your excellencies," said a slight bespectacled man with a great beard, separating himself from the technical staff – physicist Kurchatov himself, untouched by the spasms of violence in the mundane world above by virtue of his uncompromising vision – a vision that included the establishment of a lab and city that Anya'd bled for, so long ago.

A vision she was forced to share in nightmares.

Excitement peppered his voice; weariness lined his eyes. "We are finally ready to begin the next round of high-energy testing. Allow me to go through the initiation sequences."

"Like us, not even ship-spirits remember their birth," explained Anya quietly as the air began to hum with charged portents. "Yet you are born more complete than us. _Influenced_, somehow, by us humans. You remember past events, past wars – and what you remember differed in the third war from what you recalled in the second. The cubes don't just process stored memory – the archived ones demonstrate that they continually update, taking data in somehow. This effect seems to bypass Faraday cages, suggesting a non-electromagnetic property."

"Yes, yes, I know," said October impatiently. "Preamble aside?"

"Some of what you remember… they don't line up," hissed Anya secretly, because there are some things the help shouldn't hear about their leadership. "Conversations that could have never happened. _Locations that do not exist._ These cubes, your core… they are not just compiling data from the ambient environment, or even from the commanders that handle them. Where, then, are your memories coming from?"

October stared at her subordinate, a gloved hand absentmindedly and familiarly caressing the flowering scars across Anya's impassive face. "Show me."

Lightning surged.

She was on the hunt. Or, rather, this was supposedly a hunt.

"So get this – that damn Northern tsarina wasn't even listening! Her earpiece was tuned to some classic radio channel; my contact in the embassy said she was humming the whole time I gave that presentation on terrorism methodology theory."

Prinz Eugen rolled her eyes, but kept silent as she prowled through the thick artificial haze of the training course, her movements muffled by the cloak she wore and the tactical bodysuit Dlamini'd gotten made for her. Her boss's yammerings over the radio – over multiple radios, in fact, scattered and hidden throughout the course – was deliberately annoying. Meant to distract her, disorient her, get a rise out of her – in fact, do all the things she was used to doing to others to keep them off-guard and unsuspecting.

Somewhere in the dark murk was the real thing. If she successfully tazed him, she'd win the round – and find some level of satisfaction at that. He, on the other hand, was unarmed – and had to get her weapon out of her hands.

A handicap – and a necessary one. He'd won best out of three the last time they played this game, and the humiliation of getting out-fought by a half-crippled human, a bastard of dark scars and too-bright smiles, was far more maddening than his taunting. Yet the same man's point was now undeniable – if she didn't relearn the art of war under his new paradigm, things were going to go downhill rapidly in the near future.

Anti-_kansen_ weaponry. That was the discussion du jour around the world. What dominated the airwaves, what monopolized the news channels, was that somebody within Azur Lane's nationstate membership had a deep-seated anti-Axis grudge and was delivering the means of carrying it out. Though their policing bodies were desperately working together to uncover the identity of the assailants that fateful day, the diplomatic relations between the United Kingdoms and the Iris Republic has deeply soured – and the international tension elsewhere threatened the very peace they'd so desperately and recently won.

"Search, Isolate, Destroy." Or, more simply, _hunt_. That was the mission handed to the _Luparii_ by Azur Lane's security council and intelligence leadership – for the wolfhunters to destroy the threat to the herd.

"Steel yourselves," Dlamini said in their initial and traumatizing debriefing, months before the Portsmouth attack, as Prinz Eugen and Admiral Hipper shakily stared down at the remnants for a former compatriot and friend.

Hipper had to step back and heave. Prinz Eugen collapsed, the strength in her legs giving out entirely.

They'd knew – really, all of the Ironblood had known – that Deutschland privately struggled with the composite synthesis of her identity, that dual memory of the former Hipper-class L_ü_tzow and the actual Deutschland-class nameship. But for it to be physically, bloodily manifest as such before them – a wretched, twisted abomination of flesh and bone, two girls that writhed and struggled in agony to separate themselves from the body they shared until both finally succumbed to sheer exhaustion and pain…

This was beyond cruelty.

Dlamini's compassion was rarely manifest since that day, but she dimly remembered him blocking her view of the pitiable horror on that impersonal medical slab, guiding the both of them by their nerveless hands to a quiet place, where the tears flowed freely and privately.

"Siren tech," he said days later in their dorm, when they were finally able to speak about it. "A bastardization of it – something that interferes with your cores, scrambles the essence of whatever's within. And the problem is we can't narrow the list of culprits at all."

"...because the studies of Siren technology has been an international effort for generations," said Hipper slowly and hoarsely.

"Right, and unlike the first or even second war, now even the Balkan States have manufacturing and industrial capabilities to take advantage of aspects of it. The new paradigm of war isn't to field a few thousand _kansen_ each and fight it out."

"...it's to neutralize us entirely," said Prinz heavily, nursing a half-finished bottle of vodka. "_Sheiss_."

It didn't stop at just poor Deutschland, they'd learned. Sakura destroyers assigned to Southeast Asia had gone missing too. Leberecht Maass had frantically called in reports of something stalking her and Georg Thiele through a storm nights ago – but with no evidence when the winds and rains had settled, nothing had come of it. It wasn't until some time after that it was apparent that Z25 was supposed to have docked at a neighboring base along the same African coastal region and failed to report in.

"So, as soon as we realized what was going on, we started kidnapping you ourselves," said Dlamini wolfishly, spurring angry kicks from Hipper. "Ow, ow, yes, alright. Bad taste, I know."

"Bismarck? Tirpitz?" snapped Prinz herself.

"Safe," he assured them, but that was all he was willing to divulge. Safer, after all, if everybody's safe houses was kept secret too.

So they trained as the human _Luparii_ agents worked in the world's shadows. Trained without rigging, without even a spark of non-human capabilities, with just the aching flesh of their bones. Trained how to use their gifts more effectively – to deploy and release their riggings fluidly and in separate pieces and with speeds they'd never attempted even in the worst moments of the war. Trained with gear modifications too, made by the agency's forgemasters – though that proved less successful and a lot more tentative, as so much of the Siren-made templates humanity'd acquired had remained black boxes themselves.

"Of course, the fundamental assumptions in our prediction models raise a whole host of questions themselves," said Dlamini through a speaker near her foot as their exercise continued. "Like 'who's been making breakthroughs in Core research?' In fact, 'who gave us Wisdom Cubes?'[2] These recent events don't follow the Siren M.O. in any shape or form – but my instincts are telling me we're definitely getting played again."

He chuckled.

"Much, in fact, like I'm playing-"

"-you?"

There was a lump of moss, half-hidden in the fog. She didn't tackle it – she spun around and hook-kicked behind her instead.

A gasp of surprise – a fake one, she surmised accurately. Thrusting palms kept the taser from zeroing in on him – a messy and confusing tangle of arms and legs and cloak and camouflage netting.

"Oof!" A genuine grunt. A look of triumph on Prinz's face as she straddled him – and with a practiced flash, pinned him in place with the weight of her manifested riggings.

"Oh my," she said, giggling through heavy, tired breathes. For a man that still had physical therapy sessions to go through, Dlamini was a practiced ambush fighter, efficient and brutal to make up for his limitations – it was only her bruises, left unhealed at his order, that taught her what she needed to know to come out quite literally on top. "I'm pretty sure that's not a taser I'm feeling," she teased, waving the nonlethal firearm in her free hand as the other tightened the improvised binding around his own limbs.

She wasn't sure why her own cheeks were flushed – perhaps because the unexpectedly flustered look on the commodore's face was so rare. Perhaps she was still acclimating to running on what _kansen_ would normally consider pure fumes – even if it was otherwise indefatigable energy by purely human standards. Or perhaps memories a bit older than that, of happier days of flirt and drink and camaraderie, and the last time a man capable of matching her wit for wit looked up at her like this and...

She backed off wordlessly, absentmindedly wringing the fingers of her left hand. "I- I'm sorry."

"Prinz. Prinz Eugen!" Through the mists, the sound of a door opening and shutting. Dlamini struggled with the tangled fabric tied around both hands – and stuck firmly to a spar of broken concrete. "...aw sheiss."

* * *

[1]_Kansen_, as physical manifestations of history and cultural values, are generally adaptive to their current world's norms, some even embracing the zeitgeist more than they absolutely needed to, as was with the case with San Diego and others.

The _Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya, _whose very essence straddled two vastly disparate eras and ideologies, was not satisfied with mere adaptation. Tools they may have been born as, true – but tools with a right to judge their wielder's work.

A thinking weapon's judgment has consequences.

[2]The world's supply of _kansen_-making material was a jealously guarded secret, even among the most influential member-states of Azur Lane. Unauthorized traffic in Wisdom Cubes is as illegal as traffic in weapons-grade uranium – moreso, in some places. Uranium can't hypothetically manifest a battleship's full complement of weapons in the middle of a national capital while posing as a tourist.


End file.
